Anyone waiting for a Durham offer?

[Annabelnextdoor]

DS has applied for a STEM at Durham. Heard nothing back yet. So thought I’d start a thread so we can share news of offers coming though?
Anyone have any experience as to when offers for STEM are normally made?. The thought of waiting until April seems too much!

But in 2021 and 2020 it was around 50% for standard applicants, which presumably is what this year's will revert to.

More detail ( and maybe more readable).

Curiously, St Andrew's English has had a similar thing with falling offer numbers - their RUK english offers fell for 22 and 23 entry, such that 2023 was less than half the number of offers as the previous few years, with very squashing impacts on offer rates (15-33%) depending on WP status in 2023/. Again, hopefully that will go back to previous levels this year.

@Rollergirl11 Not sure if all that is helpful or not...

Very interesting and thanks for sharing, where did you find these stats? I’ve been trying to find admissions/offer rate information like this for classical studies/civilisation, including a breakdown for contextual, for both St As and Durham.

@Innisfree you have to ask for them as an FOI request on the whatdoyouknow website. Is all a bit silly as the unis won't tell you directly but have to answer FOIs. It is key to phrase the question very very exactly eg are you asking for all application and offer numbers of just home ones etc. have a browse on past requests for inspiration about how to phrase the questions.

For St A remember to specify RUK or Scottish applicants as necessary (or both, separately, if you want to compare.

I did a spate of these when DS2 was dpinf his ucas form to get an idea of how sensible his line up was. Although, the 2022 offer rate armegedon didn't really cheer

My son got his offer for Biology last year very late.

Thankyou. Good idea, but I’m probably too late for a FOI now, the ucas form has been in since November! Will do that for DD in a year’s time though. I will check out the website again for the existing info. DS is contextual at St Andrews (young carer) but not at Durham. But Durham do mention taking other factors into account, so you never know. Not sure if contextual applicants actually receive a higher offer rate though, or just lower threshold for entry.

@Innisfree I think that totally depends on course and university, and how high the general offer rates are. For the unis I was looking at, FWIW, Durham, Edinburgh and St A were higher offer rates for contextual, but UCL for instance wasn't

@Revengeofthepangolins also St Andrews give guaranteed offers to certain SIM decile and care experienced applicants which will increase the stats. Unfortunately young careers don’t get a guaranteed offer but do qualify for a lower minimum entry requirement and extra consideration. I don’t think Durham offer a guaranteed offer scheme for any contextuals.

@Revengeofthepangolins very interesting & I wish I'd known about this for Business which DS has applied for at Durham. We were aware of the high number of overseas offers that Durham makes, but if the home non contextual numbers are similar to those for English, that is very disheartening...

Gosh fascinating! I looked up the places available vs applicants by course and interesting stats. My DD has her grades in hand (oh my gosh does that take much of the stress out) and got her offer within six weeks (late November). Not a particularly popular course (Sociology) so higher acceptance rate in the first place compared to many others. She has three A stars and the course requires AAB, so not sure if she got an early offer because she already has the grades, or that they (even if just predicted) are higher than required, or because there is a higher acceptance rate. Probably a combination.
She did find that there was no Sociology course that required anything as high as Cambridge, even LSE has it at AAB and Edinburgh AAA which is the closest.

I am starting to feel it is all entirely random and impossible to second guess. DD applied to LSE and Edinburgh in early October but has heard nothing so far. She added Durham at the beginning of January and got an offer in 2.5 weeks (fairly competitive course). Different departments in the same universities seem to work to entirely different timescales.

Thank you for taking the time to post that, it’s really useful and interesting.

It does rather feel like they throw all the applications up in the air and pluck them randomly.

DD now has 3 close friends with Durham offers that are all going to the offer holder day together. I think she’s starting to loose confidence in her application and I can understand that fresh off the back of her Cambridge rejection.

Really hope your Dd hears from them soon @Rollergirl11 . The Tsr spreadsheet doesn’t seem to have any English offers on there so she should take heart (hard I know).

I think it might be more complicated than that . certainly a couple of years ago they used the polar system ( 5 groups ) for making offers - the idea being to reduce the proportion of the most privileged students to the least privileged which in reality meant reducing offers to the most privileged group - this isn’t just state v private but also things like postcode % who go to uni etc etc

I don’t think Durham do anything like top slicing the best applicants for early offers either - two years ago My son had a clean sweep ( inc 4 A* predicted , top grades in two unrelated AS ) & had to wait until mid Feb , and others I know until much later . I know Exeter, for example, do this and they make that clear . But it’s possible things have changed .

saying all of that there have definitely been surprises as to who gets offers, who doesn’t and who gets contextual offers too..

My DS1 was a 2022 applicant for History with 4A* predicted (and later achieved). He waited 4 months for his Durham offer. (He didn’t apply to Oxbridge so that wasn’t a factor). Loads on TSR forum that year got rejected from Durham with excellent grades.
If you are waiting on a History offer, don’t give up yet.

DS got an offer from Durham today for Natsci. His first offer of five! And the one he wanted. It’s been a long wait.
Fingers crossed for your dc. I know how tough the wait is!

Congratulations to him. My ds is still waiting for NatSci, let’s hope he hears soon. Where else has your ds applied?

He’s applied to Edinburgh, St Andrews, Warwick. Has been a long stressful wait for him. So it’s a nice start to the weekend.
Hopefully, things are moving now the deadline has passed and your DS hears soon.

Does anyone know if you insure Durham what the chances of getting college halls for the first year?
thanks

Everyone gets college accommodation- certainly last year all those who insured were given a college allocation when they were done in June time. The actual accommodation isn’t sorted until after results when college allocations are firmed and they send out accommodation preference forms.

Good question about accommodation for insurance candidates.
I suppose a college allocation (which even those who had an offer and who then reject rather than firm or insure can have) isn’t the same as a guarantee of actual accommodation. College membership and accommodation are 2 different things. The guarantee as far as I can see only applies to those firming.
Aa I understand it, final college allocations go out after results. Then a form to express accommodation preferences after. But presumably they won’t send it to people who are insurance or clearing if they can’t give accommodation. Perhaps in reality they can and do offer those categories accommodation tooUsually, but I suppose they give themselves some Flexibility by not guaranteeing it??
Kitty, does your DD know anyone who came via insurance or Ckearing? I think there were a small no of courses in Clwaring briefly last year. Did any of those guys get/not get accommodation?

I wonder if Durham doesn’t have that many insurance people? Their offers are often quite high and higher than Oxbridge for some courses so bout suitable as insurance. Maybe there are other courses where people do insure more than others?
Perhaps this also explains why there are so many late offers - as people start to firm and insure, Durham can see much more clearly how many people they are likely to have coming (based on knowing rough percentages of those who firm that will fail to meet their offer) as firms are a big proportion rather than insurance acceptances. On that basis they can then make further offers if needed or do more rejections. But they can’t decide how many to give until late stages, until they know how many have rejected them. I might be wrong in this.

It would be nice to think that an insurance candidate will get accommodation too. Presumably large percentages of those with provisional allocations actually reject Durham anyway, in favour of Oxbridge, London, Edinburgh etc? So it’s not surprising that significant college reallocation has to happen after results when they remove not just those who rejected them earlier but also those who didn’t get their grades. The final picture must be very different. Does make you wonder why they do that provisional allocation when so many of those given college places don’t come - probably their way of trying to get candidates to firm??

Durhams website states that all undergraduates are guaranteed an accommodation offer - I don’t feel there’s a shortage of college accommodation as reasonable numbers of 2nd and 3rd years live in. I think they may have had issues the first Covid year (as did most places) as significantly higher numbers of students ended up meeting their offers).

College reallocation allows reshuffling to where there are spaces I guess.

refarding your comment about a large number of provisional college allocations rejecting Durham you only get a college if you have firmed / insured - they’re not allocated until June time.